Many aircraft are required to provide passengers and crew members in the pressurized cabin with an emergency breathing mask in the event of a sudden loss of pressure due to a rupture in the cabin wall or to a failure in the aircraft's pressurizing system. The conventional emergency breathing mask is typically stowed in an overhead storage container directly over the user. Upon a sudden loss of cabin pressure, the container door opens automatically and the mask in deployed by gravity to the user.
However, the configuration of some aircraft prevents mounting the storage container directly overhead the user. For example, military aircraft such as cargo planes often require an open cabin for storage, and therefore, necessitate mounting the emergency breathing mask storage containers on the side wall or shell of the aircraft so that the container opening is in a vertical plane of orientation relative to an at an elevation above the user. When the container is mounted in this manner and the opening is positioned vertically relative to the user, the arrangement is such as to preclude initial gravity induced deployment of the breathing masks from the container to the user. Consequently, it would not be feasible to utilize the conventional type overhead storage container when mounting in a vertical plane of orientation. Therefore, a new method of presenting an emergency breathing mask to a user is needed when the storage container is not mounted in an orientation enabling gravity alone to deploy the mask to the user.